More school districts consider free meals for all

Tuesday

Aug 26, 2014 at 6:00 AMAug 26, 2014 at 4:25 PM

By Brian Lee TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

The adage that there is no such thing as a free lunch is being challenged in Southbridge.

The Southbridge schools are participating in a federal government-sponsored universal meal program called the Community Eligibility Provision, the latest opportunity for schools with high percentages of low-income children to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students.

Qualifying schools must have at least 40 percent of their students either in foster care, Head Start, or are confirmed as homeless, migrant or living in households that receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families cash assistance, or Food Distribution on Indian Reservation benefits.

The meals program is a result of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, and it was phased in by the U.S. Department of Agriculture over three years.

Last year, the program operated in 11 states, 600 local education agencies and 4,000 schools. It was made available nationwide July 1.

Government advocates say there is "no charge," rather than saying the meals are "free."

Nick Billis, Southbridge school district's co-director of food services, said the new program will save the district the time of filling out paperwork for its high concentration of students who received free and reduced-priced meals.

Families no longer need to turn in free- and reduced-priced meal applications, and schools do not need to process applications or conduct verification.

Mr. Billis said many students last year bought a second meal, and under the new CEP program, a student would still have to pay for a second meal.

In addition, students would still have to pay for a la carte items such as chips, soups, and chili, he said.

Last year in Southbridge, lunch was $2.50, and 40 cents for reduced-priced lunch.

Mr. Billis said the district was bracing for the domino effect of "beefed-up" food orders, trash volumes and the need for additional employee hours.

But not every district that qualified for the meals program is taking advantage.

In Worcester, city schools are not participating this year because the concept is in its infancy and "there are details that need to be fleshed out before we can evaluate the impact it would have on the district," said Donna Lombardi, director of nutrition for Worcester schools.

Specifically, there are questions about whether districts would lose money that is tied to the number of students on free and reduced-priced lunch, such as E-rate technology funds and various entitlement grants, said Ms. Lombardi and officials in Athol-Royalston, Fitchburg and Webster, which are eligible school districts.

"Because it's free to the child does not mean it's free to the district, and that's what we're all waiting to see," Ms. Lombardi said. "Because you need to find a funding source for the number of meals that you serve that are not free-eligible."

Worcester will charge $1.75 for lunch and 25 cents for breakfast for students who don't qualify for free and reduced-priced meals, but it has a universal breakfast program in schools that have the highest levels of students on free and reduced-priced meals, she said.

The Athol-Royalston Regional School District also declined to take part in the meals program because its administration determined that the district would lose E-rate money and it would be a "net result loss," according to Superintendent Anthony Polito.

Fitchburg and Webster school committees plan to discuss the topic tonight.

Robert Jokela, Fitchburg's assistant superintendent of finance operations, said the district applied to and was accepted into the free-meals program, but because of "Chapter 70 funding uncertainties" tied to participating in CEP, the School Committee will review whether to participate in the CEP in fiscal 2015 or postpone it until 2016.

"Every district, I guess, has to do their due diligence, and that would include us as well," Mr. Jokela said.

The Webster School Committee voted in July to approve participating in CEP, but today will discuss "the potential financial liability with exercising" the program, said Superintendent Barbara Malkas, who added the district hadn't received much guidance from the state.

"I think we'll probably end up going the same route as Athol-Royalston because they put a deadline on us (of Aug. 31) to notify whether or not we're going to accept the program. But they have not given us any information as to how to mitigate that financial liability," said Ms. Malkas, whose district has a free breakfast program at Park Avenue Elementary School.

But state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education spokeswoman Jacqueline Reis said the Community Eligibility Provision should not interfere with a district's ability to apply for E-rate and entitlement funding.

"The federal government seems to be aware in trying to find other ways to calculate" eligibility for E-rate and entitlement grants, Ms. Reis said.

Regarding E-rate money, the Federal Communications Commission is making a revision for the 2015-16 school year to "make it easier" for school districts adopting the CEP to apply for discounted telecommunications services and Internet access through the E-rate program.

Under the new FCC policy, all school districts, whether they adopt CEP for all, some or none of their schools, must determine their discount percentage for the district as a whole, rather than for each individual school, according to the revision.

The district will add up all the students approved for free or reduced-price meals across all schools, and divide that by the total student enrollment across the district. The resulting percentage will determine the district's E-rate discount rate, the government said.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and US. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas J. Vilsack, in a letter to chief state school officers, said the Education Department had developed "extensive and flexible guidance" to show how state educators could successfully implement Title 1 requirements using free and reduced price meal data that incorporate CEP data. Title 1 is a federal program that aims to bridge the gap between low-income students and other students.

Patricia Gardner, superintendent in Southbridge, which will launch the free meals program Wednesday, said of CEP: "It's a go for us right now. Like everyone else we're going to take a closer look at" the potential financial liabilities that were expressed by officials in other districts.

"Certainly we're excited," Ms. Gardner said. "Any time you work in a district that has low income, you want to provide food for them, and you want to make sure that they're fed as best you can feed them. So I think that this just opens a new door for us."

Ms. Gardner said she did not have any data on students who did not eat because of affordability, but "having worked in public education for a long time, I definitely think that we'll see more kids eating and more kids taking food than we did in the past," because there is no charge, she said.

The first-year Southbridge superintendent said that in other districts at which she's worked, the rate of elementary students who participated in free lunch was sometimes greater than when the students reached high school.

"I believe some of that was, kids didn't want to be labeled poor," Ms. Gardner said.

Under the CEP, none of the students will be labeled because no one will be charged, she said.